unexplained infinte loop? code analysis needed

[the rory]

I have been making a Guess My Number game, and I was seeing what would happen if I changed some of my answers a little, so for difficulty I put 'n', instead of the 1, 2 or 3 that I should normally use. It then set itself on an infinite loop for some apparently unexplained reason.

 startLabel:
    cout << "\tWelcome to Guess My Number!\n\n";
    difficultyLabel:
    cout << "Difficulty:\t 1 - Easy\t 2 - Normal\t 3 - Hard\n\n";
    cin >> difficulty;

    switch(difficulty)
    {
    case 1:
        cout << "\nEasy: ";
        maxNum = 50;
        cout << "Number will be generated between 1 and 50.";
        break;
    case 2:
        cout << "\nNormal: ";
        maxNum = 100;
        cout << "Number will be generated between 1 and 100.";
        break;
    case 3:
        cout << "\nHard: ";
        maxNum = 200;
        cout << "Number will be generated between 1 and 200.";
        break;
    default:
        cout << "\nYou made an invalid choice.\n";
        cout << "_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ \n";
        goto difficultyLabel;
    }

I'm still fairly new to C++ so I realise my question may be pretty stupid, but help would be much appreciated :D

Edit: I should probably add that when I put the difficulty as another number, for example 4, it just repeats and asks for difficulty again like it should do.

[Codermik]

It will do that as its expecting a numeric value and your giving it a ascii character. You should also try and avoid goto statements, not good practice - use a do..while to make sure they enter within the range required so you dont need that nasty goto statement ;-)

Anyway, to get around the loop issue just read in a character and test that instead of an int.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
	char difficulty;

	do {

		cout << "Difficulty:\t 1 - Easy\t 2 - Normal\t 3 - Hard\n";
		cin >> difficulty;

	} while (difficulty < '1' || difficulty > '3');

	switch (difficulty)
	{
		case '1':
			// code here...
		break;
	}

	return 0;
}

[JockX]

Do reaserch on cin.ignore and cin.clear functions to defend your code against user accidentally typing text where numeric value is expeced.